“Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.”
“Never learn to do anything. If you don't learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.”
“Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”
“When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.”
“It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.”
“I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them.”
“Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.”
“The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.”
“A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.”
“I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer.”
“Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.”
“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.”
“Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: The one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.”
“Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them.”
“To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did, I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.”
“Why is it that we rejoice at birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.”
“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.”
“Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.”
“The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession, but carrying a banner.”
“History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.”
“A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.”
“Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.”
“Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”
“There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.”
“Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world -- and never will.”
“The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.”
“We need not worry so much about what man descends from; it's what he descends to that shames the human race.”
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
“A man can seldom -- very, very, seldom -- fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy.”